Some stories were never supposed to be told. Stories that exist in the twilight, between science and the supernatural, between history and the form, stories that speak of terrifying things, stories that you want to hear,

stories that you need to hear, stories that will sink their teeth in and never let you go. My name is Mike Brown, and this is Pleasing Terrors.

Pleasing Terrors Podcast Episode 42

The Mermaid Returns

Part 2

Speechless Walls

The address 104 King Street is mentioned in this episode. The street numbers have changed since the events described here, so the current 104 King Street is an entirely different location

and has no connection to this story. Also, the episode is going to be covering some very dark and disturbing parts of the history of Charleston, South Carolina.

You will also hear terms that are today considered to be racially insensitive. These are included only where it is necessary to quote historical sources accurately.

Listener discretion is advised.

In January of 1860, at the Chapel of St. Nicholas de Biennes and the French Village of St. Nicholas de O, the work continues restoring frescoes that have long been hidden by layers of white paint,

and there is a sense that a story is unfolding as each image is revealed. They have uncovered three panels and have moved on to a fourth.

The first one depicts the marriage of a nobleman and lady. In the second, the husband is given his wife a new set of keys. A locked door can be seen in the background.

In the third, the husband is believed to have departed the home and left alone, his wife has unlocked the door. Curious is to what the room contains.

She sees a room whose walls are decorated with the bodies of dead women, and too late, she realizes that she is married a monster.

The wife is despondent. These women were her husband's previous wives. This scene has played out many times before.

Each of them have been given a set of keys and had given into her curiosity, unlocked the door, and made the same horrible discovery.

In the fourth panel, the workers see that the husband has returned and is enraged. He considers his wife's curiosity to be a betrayal, and she realizes that she is doomed.

In the background, another figured kneels by a window, though who they are and what role they play is not yet clear. To find the answer, the work would have to continue.

The frescoes of St. Nicholas depicted something very similar to an almost forgotten local legend, one that would have been lost had it not been transformed into a fairy tale.

None of the men working in the church could know that across the Atlantic Ocean, in Charleston, South Carolina, a new version of that same legend had been born, one based on a horrific event that occurred in the city just a few months earlier.

40 years later, that Charleston legend, at least some versions of it, were also beginning to fade away, and would likely have disappeared altogether, except for the intervention of a stranger to that city.

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